Stay Home PaPa

Daylight Savings Time Tramples Baby’s Schedule

Posted on March 13, 2012 Updated on March 13, 2012

I guess we can add Daylight Savings Time to the list of things that we mistakenly did not think would impact the baby. With Maddie’s final cranium appointment right smack in the middle of the afternoon, things were bound to be somewhat out of whack. But once we got home from the appointment, Maddie’s Dad made a severe miscalculation. This error in judgment would have far reaching negative implications for the remainder of the evening.

The miscalculation was simple enough. We got home at 4pm, which meant there was not enough time to put Maddie down for a nap before her bedtime. Had I thought it through just a little bit more, I would have taken into account that as far as Maddie was concerned, it was only 3pm. This misstep put Maddie and I on a collision course for some rough evening action of the ugly variety.

Earlier in the day on the way to Maddie’s appointment, she did take two separate naps in the car. But these naps were not long enough to cope with the ensuing sleep shortage. The only course of action was to feed her quickly and try to fend off the looming crisis.

I started Maddie off with an apricot mixture and the evening was coming together better than expected. But after about ten spoonfuls, fatigue and crankiness took over. Maddie began rubbing this apricot sauce into her both of her eyes. When I tried to dissuade her from this fruity path to blindness – she lost it. She went from the happy baby to the pea soup spitting Linda Blair in about five seconds.

So now we’re on the rocky path to an early, but angry bedtime. The rest of the feeding was a disaster. There was crying, pouting, spitting and using the remainder of her food as a new wave hair-care product.

Step two was a quickie bath that actually didn’t go too badly.

Step three was bedtime and the commotion began anew. There were heavy protests despite the fact that her father’s complaint department had shut down 30 minutes earlier.

The worst part of course is dealing with the fact that your poor decision-making caused the problem in the first place. But as usual, all you can do is learn from your mistakes before your daughter begins issuing a series of pink slips, reprimands and demerits.